Mirek Topolanek

With apologies for the rubbish photoshopping but imagine if the British Conservatives ran a poster campaign like this on the beaches of Spain to encourage British tourists to vote for them at the forthcoming election...

Well, it's the strategy that the Czech Civic Democrats have chosen to adopt for their own countrymen's tourists visiting Croatia:

See all the posters here and watch a Wall Street Journal video on the campaign below:

The policy of fiscal stimulus hasn't had a good week in the European Parliament.

The attack on Gordon Brown's position by MEP Daniel Hannan is now well documented, yet the following day in the very same chamber no less a figure than the Czech Prime Minister, Mirek Toplanek - who currently holds the Presidency of the European Union - launched a stinging attack on President Obama's economic policy.

Yesterday, in reference to the $787 billion spending plan being embarked upon by President Obama, and the $1 trillion he plans to pump into the financial system to revive lending, Mr Topolanek said:

"All of these steps, these combinations and permanency is the way to hell. We need to read the history books and the lessons of history and the
biggest success of the EU is the refusal to go this way."

He added that the package would "undermine the stability
of the global financial market".

There is more on what he had to say and it implications for Czech-US relations in the below report screened on Russia Today.